1. Field of the Invention
The present invention concerns an "all terrain" motor vehicle adapted to receive a shooting device and to move the latter vertically.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Shooting which entails displacement of a camera over the ground and its elevation on a vertical axis is conventionally effected by means of the following devices:
The first device is a dolly adapted to roll on substantially horizontal rails or on a substantially flat, smooth and hard surface. The dolly may be fitted with an articulated lifting arm adapted to support a camera, a conventional tilt and pan control device and one or two operators This method achieves good stability and good camera horizontality. It entails installing a considerable amount of equipment, however, prevents any unplanned alteration or extension of the shooting route and restricts framing because the rails or boards used to correct irregularities in the terrain may enter shots. These restrictions also apply to conventional or remote-controlled cranes although their capabilities in terms of translation and rotation about three axes are better than those of the aforementioned means. PA1 The second device has a camera, its operators and a conventional or remote-controlled camera tilt and pan device together with a conventional lifting arm mounted on a conventional type automobile vehicle, with the superstructure removed so that it does not impede shooting, usually having a very soft conventional suspension, a large chassis and wide, under-inflated tires. A device of this kind has a more extensive range of speed than a dolly but is less maneuverable and is larger in overall size. The device is unusable except on metaled road surfaces for which the vehicle was designed: vibration and impact jolt the lens, the horizontal references of the camera are severely disturbed and the vehicle cannot drive over obstacles or abrupt changes in level at each wheel without the risk of overturning.
A third known device combines a vehicle, a conventional crane and gyroscopic camera or lens stabilizers which stabilize gyroscopically the optical path of the image. This latter technique tends to restrict panning and tilting of the camera. It is ill-suited to attenuating unwanted translatory movements and movements of the rotation axis of the camera lens. The implementation of this type of device on an all terrain vehicle results in considerable installation costs.
Another conventional device includes various camera stabilizing means allowing some movement in elevation and adapted to be carried by the operator wearing a harness and moving on foot or travelling on a vehicle (case 1) or harnessed directly to a vehicle (case 2). The most comprehensive form of such devices is described in French Patent 7,719,662. They constitute mobile and translatory devices and are subject to certain geometrical criteria which limit displacement of the camera on the vertical axis in particular to their own amplitude of movement in translation. In case 1, shooting is physically tiring for the operator (so limiting his productivity) and dangerous because in difficult and hilly terrain he has only his own muscles and sense of balance to compensate for his own instability. In this case any harnessing and bracing of the operator who is already wearing a harness tends to impede his ability to correct his own posture and to restrict the angles at which he can shoot. In case 2 the capacity of the shock absorbing means is seriously compromised if the vehicle is inclined to one side, drives up or down an incline or makes a tight turn, as to operate correctly they require a stable anchor point which is not possible with rigid attachment to a superstructure of the vehicle or any other support rigidly attached to the chassis. In all situations in which the horizontality of the moving vehicle is compromised, the operator must make violent compensatory movements using the muscles of the arms and shoulders to counteract sudden translatory movements of the floating part of the device whose anchor point is subject to angular deviations which are amplified proportionally to those of the chassis. The stabilizing means may even break if their masses are no longer controlled by the operator who also has to maintain his own stability.
The applicant has already made an invention whereby some of these problems may be overcome and this is the subject of a patent issued Jan. 31, 1992, as French Patent Number 8,816,196. This patent describes a device for moving a shooting device and the personnel needed to operate it over ground that is traditionally inaccessible to conventional equipment while offering, even at very low speeds, a stability and maintenance of the horizontal level of the device independently of the terrain over which the vehicle moves. The drawback of a device of this kind in accordance with the '196 patent of the applicant is its high manufacturing cost given the complexity of its industrial manufacture.